an open letter to john waters of the irish times

Dear John Waters.
Forgive my various pejorative remarks about your convenient and supposed Catholic conversion.
No insult was intended.
I merely wanted to inspire you to greater efforts.
Today I'd like to talk about something else.
You wrote recently about internet businesses which claim to advise people about investment opportunities to be gained from the approaching collapse of the European currency.
You made some erudite and apposite points in your meditations on the morality of such businesses.
One of your analogies interested me particularly.
You said that the internet advert advising people on how they might profit from the collapse of the Euro amounted to shouting "Fire," in a crowded theatre.
You averred that every journalist learns on day one that shouting "Fire" in a crowded theatre is beyond the protections envisaged under our Free Speech traditions.
Yes Mr Waters.
But there is one instance when shouting "Fire" in a crowded theatre is perfectly acceptable.
Every journalist learns this on day two.
At least they do if they talk to me.
A person is perfectly entitled, indeed obligated, to shout "Fire" in a crowded theatre, if there is in fact a fire engulfing the theatre.
The Euro is going down alright.
But you were correct in your scathing assessment of those trying to profit from its demise.
Such profiteers are attempting to trade off the citizenry's gullibility as they have always done.
"Listen to us," they cry. "We'll show you how to make money while your neighbours starve."
Yes.
Your analogy about the fire was most illuminating though as I've said, not perfect.
A closer analogy to the behaviour of these faux businessmen (faux because most of them have never done a day's work in their lives) who are purporting to advise people on how to profit from the recession, would be to envisage the same businessmen in the same crowded theatre, which is of course as per usual burning down, only this time the businessmen are blocking the aisles and offering to sell people maps showing the shortest route to the exits.
Or maybe even closer to the mark would be if we imagined the same internet businessmen, now standing in the doorway of the theatre, blocking the last best escape route, and seeking to charge people to get out.
Or finally, closest of all to the perfect analogy for those scoundrels advertising their expertise in how to profit from the collapse of our currency, closest of all I say, we might envision the businessmen as the bankers who have bankrupted Ireland, by making us all liable for their gambling losses, and we might once more conceive of ourselves as sharing a theatre with these bankers, and once more we might listen as the bankers are simultaneously blocking the exits and claiming to own the theatre which is clearly burning to the ground around us.
And as the blaze becomes an inferno, the bankers are still standing blocking the aisles and the exits.
Only now at last they're insisting that we the people guarantee to buy limitless numbers of tickets off them... FOR THEIR NEXT UNSPECIFIED THEATRE PRODUCTIONS WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT TAKE PLACE IN THE UNSPECIFIED FUTURE WHEN THIS HELLFIRE ENGULFED THEATRE WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT BELONG TO THEM, MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE BEEN REBUILT.
That Mr Waters is the analogy that fits both the internet sharks looking to hoover up some gulls on your computer, and the banking gangsters who have first corrupted now hijacked our nation.
James Healy